Happy that she finally found her birth parents after more than 30 years, Trista Goldberg, an American – Vietnamese businesswoman, has spent her time and money helping other Vietnamese orphans around the world find their birth families.
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| Trista Goldberg is collecting DNA sample for test Photo: Tuoi Tre |
Goldberg founded Operation Reunite in the U.S. to help Vietnamese adoptees abroad and in Vietnam discover their past. She also helps Americans in their search for citizenship and birth parents.
She has recently come back to Vietnam to join other charitable projects. This trip, she said she wants to meet Vietnamese birth mothers that have contacted her for help. She hopes to exchange information with them so she can help find their lost children that left during the mass evacuation of infants, known as the Babylift, to Western countries at the end of the American War in April 1975.
She has brought 200 DNA test kits to sample as many birth mothers as possible while in Vietnam. Vietnamese volunteers are helping her translate documents from the birth parents to track the mothers down.
Goldberg started her journey in 2000 when she began to wonder about her heritage. Her birth brother, also adopted, suggested her to search for their family. After three months of searching, they found their birth family in April 2001.
The experience of finding her family gave Goldberg the idea to form an organisation to help others in their own searches. She also found out, through connecting with adoptees, that not all of them want to search for birth parents—some just wanted to connect with other adoptees with similar experiences. She said she was able to respect that, but also tried to encourage them to talk about their culture and heritage, which was different from the environment most adoptees grew up in.
She started having reunions all around the globe with other adoptees, and then someone had the idea to do a reunion in Vietnam. After doing weekly Skype meetings and forming a planning committee, they talked about adoption issues and invited guest speakers like Tammy Nguyen Lee, producer of “Operation Babylift, The Lost Children of Vietnam,” and their group grows. Like Goldberg, everyone had a desire to find out more about their genealogical connections. It is possible they might even have siblings within the adoption community, so they brought in Family Tree DNA, a genetic testing service, to help them.
DNA data bank established
Goldberg said most Babylift adoptees have only a few papers about their biological family, making it difficult to find them. So Operation Reunite began building a DNA data bank for families to use to try to identify loved ones.
Kim Browne, who is also a Vietnamese adoptee said, "It made me feel very emotional, because I know that parents who lost children, miss and expect to find and see us again. I understand that losing their children is their real horror. That makes me more determined in the search for my roots.”
Goldberg launched a project called Operation DNA in Vietnam, which uses a DNA database to reconnect families. This is the first ever project to reunite Vietnamese adoptees with their genealogical lineage. This DNA project can connect up to five generations of families with just a simple cheek swab sample.
She is also planning to raise money to pay for DNA tests for birth mothers in Vietnam who cannot afford them. Many of the mothers are getting old and want to reconnect with their children before it is too late.
